Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Theater Whore: Ghost In The Shell

Ghost
In The Shell 2/10

In all
the controversy surrounded the new Ghost In The Shell movie people
seem to be overlooking the most important fact: this movie was dull
as hell. Its a movie where every once in a while I went “Oh, that
looks kinda cool.” Other than that it just felt like a convoluted
mess. I was not a huge fan of the anime and recently watched one of
them on Netflix having no emotional attachment. But I am a huge fan
of Scarlett Johansson. I am also not plagued by having problems with
one race portraying another. Yeah. I'll be getting into that soon
enough. So I was the perfect person to watch this movie and give it a
fair shake.

In the
future shit looks weird. The world is a combination of both filthy
and very futuristic at the same time. People have robot parts added
to them and blah blah blah. ScarJo is a “young woman” in the body
of a robot after an accident that killed her parents. Even though I
am not a huge fan of this series or anything what I do know is that
the main character looks like she is 15, maybe 16 years old. As much
as I love ScarJo she does not look like a teenager. The rest of the
movie is shooting, punching, and robot shit. Its really not that
interesting.

Before
I saw this I had heard people getting mad and calling this movie
“white washed.” I laughed, of course. Why? Because we're all meat
bags with different shapes, sounds, and colors. Just a bunch of
stupid ass humans racing towards a future run by robots. But
minorities get pissed when a White person plays one of their
characters. People tend to shut up when its the other way around. No
one batted an eye when a Korean dude played Maverick in X-Men
Origins: Wolverine. Or when Michael Clarke Duncan played Kingpin in
Daredevil. Halle Berry is half-White and played Storm who is pure
African. Look at the entire cast of the Preacher series! If you get
mad get mad about all of it.

The
director of the original movies, Mamoru Oshii said in an interview
“The Major (ScarJo) is a cyborg and her physical form is an
entirely assumed one. The name 'Motoko Kusanagi' and her current body
are not her original name and body, so there is no basis for saying
that an Asian actress must portray her. Even if her original body
were a Japanese one, that would still apply. I can only sense a
political motive from the people opposing it, and I believe artistic
expression must be free from politics.” The guy that has the rights
to this series, Sam Yoshiba, said “Looking at her career so far, I
think Scarlett Johansson is well cast. She has the cyberpunk feel.
And we never imagined it would be a Japanese actress in the first
place. This is a chance for a Japanese property to be seen around the
world.”

They
not mad. Why you mad? People did this same thing about Doctor Strange as well as that Iron Fist
show. People wanted him to be Asian. Why? He's White. He's always
been White. They got mad he had the nerve, the nerve, to try and
explain Asian shit to an Asian woman. Hey! He just spent 15 years
living in a magical goddamn kingdom and fought a motherfucking
dragon! Maybe he knows a thing or two she don't. Anyway, get more
upset about how lame this movie was than the fact that a hot ass
grown White woman played a young girl created in Japan. People are
acting like this character was their friend growing up or some shit.
How far does this go? Is it okay for other races to voice a race that
is not their own in cartoons and video games? How about “Black”
movies like Hidden Figures where no one can tell you who directed it?
Is it okay if you don't know or do we continue to play this game of
Who Gets To Be The Victim This Week?! for a while longer? Either way.
Bad movie. Don't waste your time.